Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c6.s1.8

c6.s1.8

Only a few of these figures appear to be correct. For example, seventy dispensaries, large and small, Government controlled or privately owned, of Unani and Vedic systems of medicine, would not be too many for the then Delhi. Even a thousand poets may have been there because we know that Mahmud of Ghazni had 400 at his court.⁶ Again since Muhammad Tughlaq could send an army of 370,000 on a single expedition, a total of 900,000 for the whole of his dominions may also be conceded. Else, the testimony of Shihabuddin as well as of others cited is not wholly reliable. But it is not entirely useless. As Professor Karl F. Helleiner points out, the ancients spoke in terms of more and less, large and small, high and low. "They cannot often have mistaken prosperity for misery, progress for decline, demographic growth for depopulation."⁷ Therefore, what these writers say is true in spirit if not in letter. They were writing (as Shihabuddin says) about "a most important country with which no other country in the world can be compared.